Something of what I wrote re my noise as my country and western. Well, what's recalled offhand. Forgot all the bullet points but mainly part social history, part memoir.

What I was long clueless about was the working class post WW2 diaspora of rural whites going for defense jobs. The stats, even the broad trends are beyond me. But Sunset Park somewhere in PA is some bit of country fan convergence for ex Southern formerly rural white folk.

Black Americans had some share of the same wartime/postwar boom. Many headed north to Chicago, Harlem NYC, etc to transplant recreate black music. Ergo R & B, Chicago electric blues, the growth and change of Jazz, gospel, soul--beat goes on. Union leader for sleeping car porters, A. Philip Rudolph bucked early wartime vigor in the US to demand war factory jobs for blacks and likely spurred on many trends and changes. Post Pearl Harbor, he had to say -- do this or we strike. Not easy (also credited for lobbying for 1948 desegregation of US armed forces). But that pesky world depression had been hanging on. Many people weren't doing so great beforehand.

Working class rural whites nudged north to war effort factories. The Monroe Brothers, Charlie and Bill et al,left Kentucky for jobs in Indiana. And brought along the music that would morph into Bluegrass. Transplanted, homesick workers like themselves were the audience.

The broad metaphor/comparison to wartime & postwar C&W that I saw was something like: "I came from one place to another. I remembered/brought along/strived to reenact X, and ended up creating Y."

I could dig deeper for my own memoir of noise to fill out details, but for now just looking to supply the rough scaffolding archetype of displacement/recollection/mutation as a common storyline for many. Maybe you. FWIW.

It's always worthwhile (FWIW, right?) to ponder the origins of the music one loves. Country music, in one cover-it-all omniscient sentence, is just another version of the blues. You could take off from there and write a dissertation, but me, I'd rather sit on the couch and play some rockabilly.

Reply

Evan Cantor

1/7/2020 13:10:17

oh right--he says! Those of you who know me know that the minute I say something like this, I turn right around and write a freakin' dissertation... must resist... must resist....

Kevin -- I think I get whatcher saying about your "noise" being an evolution of genres, just as C&W is an evolution of genres.

I'm curious though to hear one or two of your own noise compositions that employ a juicy chunk of that C&W flavor. Care to provide a link or two?

Back in 2006 I traveled around the southeast USA and got a big dose of what Country and Folk music are all about. Thusly influenced, by 2007 I had assembled the closest thing I've ever done to a Country Folk album, although I doubt it appeals to very many legit C&W fans -- not really "noisy" but pretty experimental. I'll send you a link if yer curious.

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Leslie Singer

1/9/2020 13:06:30

Kevin, I really enjoyed reading your article. Historic and personal-- just like how I like my country music! Thanks for posting!

Migrated through noise and comic monologue into song and back to noise again. From the time of Bengal Burlap through Nobody Home (Charlottesville, Boston, circa 1985-1988) and The Loved Ones (Cambridge MA, circa 1993), sundry stretches of solo home recording of songs, to about now.

Sundry poems published, more recently in Little River 02 review and in the Domesticated Primate compilations, Rituals, June 2019 and Tidings, Dec. 2018.

​The Electronic Cottage website is primarily an online magazine for the publication of lengthy and in-depth articles, essays, and interviews.For those of you who use Facebook I have created an Electronic Cottage Group, which is a casual social gathering place of the EC Community, where EC people can meet, share artwork and news of current projects and releases.The website and this EC Facebook Group are two separate but connected entities of the greater EC Community.